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Uncrushable Laser Monkeys! (or, what I had for dinner)

Catchup

Saturday, October 22, 2005, 10:10 PM

Well, it's pretty clear that I'm not going to update the blog everyday. I thought I would, but I have realized I most enjoy doing it when I actually cook something interesting... there are only so many times I can log in and say "I was sick so I ate goldfish crackers." However, I have to play catchup just to make sure I have a record of the days where I didn't do anything terribly clever, just so I'll be able to look back later and see how un-clever I've been.

Thursday, October 20

breakfast: I don't think I forgot about breakfast. I definitely think I ate something. Whatever it was, I probably had tea with it. I might have had Ochazuke again. Who knows.

lunch: I might have had a bean burritto, but who can say? I need to be more responsible about updating.

dinner: buffalo chicken pizza with blue cheese dressing. I only had one piece; somehow buffalo chicken pizza is way more filling than any other kind of pizza.

Friday, October 21

breakfast: Cold pizza.

lunch: Orange chicken with fried rice from a chineese place we found by the laundromat. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it reminded me of Lo Maine, which was the chineese restaurant by the landromat we went to in Maine. (Get it, mein, maine....) It's mostly a takeout place with a couple of tables in front, and you have to ask nicely to get chopsticks instead of a fork. It was quite tasty for chineese takeout. The servings were huge; we're going to have to split something next time.

dinner: We steamed some broccolli in the microwave and had it with the leftovers from lunch.

Menu

We had ochazuke for breakfast. We both have this cough... we've actually been sick since I started blogging. Maybe if I delete it we'll get better, but that might anger the laser monkey. Anyhoo... what with trying to convalesce and all, we got going pretty late. This is by way of saying we started lunch at 5ish and then decided maybe it was dinner. Originally it was just going to be a light lunch because it was close to dinner time, but I guess it was a light dinner. It's too early to tell, maybe it was lunch and we'll eat dinner even later. But we had fake breakfast sausage, egg, and tomato.

Egg, sausage, and tomato

This is prepared about like you'd expect.
1. cut the fake sausage into patties.
2. fry fake sausage patties in olive oil until they're nicely browned on both sides
3. transfer the patties onto plates
4. break some eggs into the same pan and scramble. Some people think you have to scramble eggs in a seperate container and then pour them into the pan. That's just silly. You can whip them up just fine in the frying pan while they're cooking using the cooking implement of your choice. Then you don't have an extra dish floating around that has had raw egg in it. Since you're doing it in the same pan as the sausage, all the little sticky sausage bits that stuck to the pan will get mixed into the eggs. yum.
5. add the eggs to the plate.
6. cut tomatoes into wedges and put those on the plate
7. eat

False Pie

1. break 1 graham cracker into a coffee cup
2. add about 2 tbs of dark chocolate. This can be in the form of a handful of chocolate chips. I used two squares of a trader joes 80% cocomass pound plus bar. So they'd melt better, I cut them up.
3. top with another crumbled graham cracker.
4. pour amaretto over the top. probably a tablespoon or two. Enough for it to soak into the graham crackers.
5. microwave for 15 seconds or so. The cup should feel hot; the chocolate should be melted.
6. eat.

Menu

breakfast and lunch: again, eating seemed like a bad idea. I snacked on goldfish crackers when I got really hungry, but that was it. I'm starting to get sick of goldfish crackers, despite their high placebo rating. I probably ate as many cough drops as I did goldfish crackers. I hate being sick. If I get through today without getting a strong message that eating is a bad idea, I think I'll have something more substantial for breakfast tomorrow.

dinner: spinach soup

Recipe

We started with a dollop of bacon fat in a pan. We tend to strongly resemble vegetarians when cooking at home, but everyone who resembles a vegetarian but isn't ought to go buy a thing of bacon once in a blue moon and save the fat. It keeps a really long time in the fridge and a teaspon or so adds a lot of flavor to many recipes.

Then we added about half a cup each of chopped onions, carrots, and celery. These were all frozen. I don't know if you can buy frozen celery or not; I just buy celery once in a while and chop it all up and throw it in the freezer. We also found a bag of chopped parsley in the freezer. There was quite a bit, probably a third of a cup, maybe even a half. It was stuck in a big clump; after one injury trying to de-clump it, we just threw the whole thing into the pan.

We defrosted then sweated these in the bacon fat. The purpose isn't to brown them, so much as to have the veggies suck up the fat and the fat suck up veggie flavor and so on. Then we added half a bag of pre-cleaned spinnach. We also added the leftover, leftover rice from that duck dinner on Saturday that was too big. When the spinnach wilted down, we added just enough water to cover the vegetables and some salt and pepper. Then we heated it to boiling, just to make sure it was hot enough, then turned it to low, put the lid on it, and set the timer for half an hour.

Half an hour later, the timer rang. We weren't paying attention. So who knows how long it really ooked... maybe 45 minutes? We blended the soup with an immersion blender until it had a creamy texture. Then we added the leftover, leftover duck, which we'd diced. We gave it another 5 minutes (and even payed attention to the timer this time).

We split the soup into 2 bowls and topped it with a grated cheese blend. It was one of those Italian blends you buy when you go to the store and find they're out of parmesian. We microwaved it to melt the cheese; if we'd been high falutin', we would have probably broiled it to melt & brown the cheeze, but we didn't.

The inlaws were in town last week, so there was lots of eating out. I don't find I enjoy updating the blog when there's eating out, so I haven't. I'll do my best to remember what was eaten, though, just for the record. I won't bother with recipes---the dinners will all be high falutin'. You'll have to excuse me if I spell everything wrong here.

Wednesday, Oct 12breakfast: no idea
lunch: still no idea --- this might have been the day I was really sick and slept really late and didn't think it was worth doing more than snack before dinner.
dinner:
I don't remember the restaurant's name, but I know how to get there. It's called Nicole's or Nicky's or some woman's name starting with N's. It's on the east end of downtown albany & is in the oldest existing building in the area. Hopefully that's enough for me to figure out where to take the inlaws next time they're in town. Should you end up at a restaurant with the above description, don't trust the waiters about serving sizes. They'll tell you they are much smaller than they really are. If you order as much as they tell you to, you're in for a doggy bag.
bread & olive oil
split a pate appetizer
french onion soup
some variety of meat in some variety of sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, and carrots with maybe some other vegetable

Thursday, Oct 13breakfast: reheated some variety of meat in some variety of sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, and carrots with maybe some other vegetable
lunch: we sort of skipped lunch due to a long roadtrip up north to look at fall colors. I am sure I got enough calories from cough drops during the drive to have that count as some sort of a meal.
dinner:
dinner was at the Friend's Lake Inn, about an hour and a half north of albany.
bread with garlic and tapenade
espresso encrusted ostrich carpachio appetizer
venison with rice and some variety of vegetable
cheese plate with vermont cheedar, piave, and triple cream with crackers, rasberries, and granny smith apple

Friday, Oct 14breakfast: dunno
lunch: prosciutto sandwich from the deli by the laundromat
dinner:
dinner was at Provence, which is in stuyvesant plaza, right near our apartment
bread
pate apetizer
squash soup
trout with rice and asparagus
fudge cake with caramel ice cream

Saturday, Oct 15I was sicker than usual; I slept until 4pm and skipped breakfast and lunch and just barely managed to get myself together for dinner. Dinner was at Ginger Man, which is in downtown Albany. I had french onion soup and duck with rice and mixed julienned vegetables. I didn't eat much.

Sunday, Oct 16We did brunch at Peaches Cafe, which is also in stuyvesant plaza. I had a blueberry waffle and an egg over medium. It said in the menu that it was maine wild blueberries, but I think they lied and served the boring commercial variety of blueberries. It was still good. Dinner was half of the remaining duck with rice and mixed julienned vegetables.

Monday, Oct 17Eating seemed like a bad idea; I snacked on goldfish crackers a bit throughout the morning. Dinner was leftover beans and rice.

menuFor breakfast we had frozen berries with grapenuts, lunch was more cold pizza; and dinner was ochazuke.

recipes

frozen berries with grapenutsPut frozen mixed berries in a bowl. Top with a roughly equal amount of grapenuts. Pour coffee over the top... this sounds like it might be a little weird but trust me; I'm a recent convert myself. Don't drench it in coffee, just put enough coffee on that the grapenuts soak up coffee. There shouldn't be any actual liquid in the bowl. Microwave it a bit so the berries thaw, but this is inessential. Maybe throw on some chocolate chips for good measure.

OchazukeWe are still both under the weather so we thought ochazuke was in order. We also had a bunch of fresh broccolli that we wanted to use up, so this was slightly experimental. We have this pot that is a decent sized pot, and then there are steamer attachments that can fit onto the top without decreasing the capacity of the bottom. We cooked 1 1/2 cups of brown rice with 3 cups of water in the bottom section. To do this, put the stuff in the pot, heat it to boiling, put the lid on, then turn down to simmer. Brown rice (at least this brown rice) takes about 40 minutes to cook. I don't know why; white rice takes 20 minutes. While the rice was cooking, we prepared the broccolli and sliced a bunch of ginger into one of the steamer attachments. We didn't think the broccolli would take 40 minutes, so we waited until the rice had gone 20 minutes then put the steamer attachment on the pot and let it go 20 more minutes.

Then we put rice in a bowl, put broccolli on top, and added a couple of sour plums, furikake, and green tea. It worked out well, but the broccolli was still quite cruncy---we might try starting the broccolli at the same time as the rice if we do it again. The ginger ended up flavoring the rice because the steam hit it and dribbled back down into the rice pan, which was a nice touch. It was yummy, though. It made me feel less sick.